Face-to-face conversation is universally recognized as the preferred form of human communication. For decades this fact has been the impetus for the development of video teleconferencing systems. In a typical teleconferencing system, a pair of terminals, each with a video camera and a video display device, a microphone and a speaker, are connected by a telecommunications link to permit face-to-face communications at a distance.
However, such systems as have been developed to date have failed to address the fact that communication is best when video conference participants have eye contact with each other.
In a typical teleconferencing terminal, the video camera and the video display device are not in line with one another, but are so disposed that a communicant in a teleconference has the choice of facing the camera and not directly facing the display device or--the usual choice--facing the display device, with the result that the camera captures a face seemingly staring off into space, no eye contact then being possible with the other communicant in the teleconference.
One prior art attempt to alleviate this problem has been to place within a teleconferencing terminal a half-silvered mirror with a camera behind it and the display device off to one side. In this case, the image from the display device is reflected by the half-silvered mirror toward the local communicant while the camera scans the local communicant head-on through the half- silvered mirror, thus providing eye contact with the remote communicant. One problem with this terminal arrangement is that the video display device no longer offers a front-surface view, but an image recessed into the terminal. The loss of the sense of immediacy, of presence, is felt at once, vitiating much of the eye-contact gain that was the aim of the design.
This half-silvered mirror arrangement, often used for teleprompting, is a purely mechanical one--a half-silvered mirror in a box--at which both the video camera and the video display are pointed. The camera and the display work independently of each other, no attempt being made to coordinate their operation.
In view of the shortcomings of the above-described conventional teleconferencing terminals, it is an object of the present invention to provide a teleconferencing terminal which enables communicating parties to have eye contact with each other, and enjoy a heightened sense of each other's presence, with improved image quality.